By the slimist of margins, House Democrats will still be able to block any bad legislation brought before the floor if they can all manage to stick together, but it seems that Bush and Co. have plans to do away with this inconvenient constitutional provision designed to prevent wide-scale abuse of power.
According to Joshua Micah Marshall (link above), these Cloture Rules could simply be overlooked pending a mandate coming from the White House.
"Then we have the incident we noted yesterday in which Sen. Frist may, at the president's say-so, change the cloture rules which require 60 votes to push through legislation.
Past presidents have usually had to deal with Majority Leaders who were much more solicitous of their chamber's independence and institutional preogatives. But then again, President Bush all but appointed Frist to his post. So this should not surprise us.
In an article at Foxnews.com on possible Supreme Court nominations, C. Boyden Gray, former counsel to the first President Bush said the following about the filibuster rules in the Senate ...
As it stands today [Democrats] can block [a nominee] ... But I also believe that the president and majority leader may well decide to change the rules given the elections ... The president has a very strong political support, potential support, for asking for and getting this change."
Now, even the smallest amount of control the Democrats may have left could disappear as well. So much for our experiment with a three, or even a two-party government.
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